Written by Caballero Oscuro
The Girls Next Door offers a tantalizing view behind the scenes at the Playboy Mansion, peeling back the veil of secrecy to expose the normalcy of Hugh Hefner’s magical land. After two previous seasons, there aren’t many secrets left to reveal, but the show and its participants have entered a comfy stage of true familiarity and family that gives this season an added dimension of warmth.
For the uninitiated, the “Girls” are Hef’s live-in girlfriend #1, Holly, as well as the two other ladies living in the Mansion, Bridget and Kendra. They’re all buxom blondes, but they’re vastly different in personality and somewhat different in age. Kendra is the young jock who thinks she’s “street,” Bridget is the older girly sweetheart who still views the world through rose-colored bunny glasses, and Holly is the middle one in age who’s angling for a permanent commitment from the world’s most famous bachelor. They’re each around five years apart in age, ranging from Kendra at 21 to Bridget at 33, which puts them just within Hef’s historic age range of interest. While all three are referred to as girlfriends, Holly is definitely the queen bee and the only one who is truly Hef’s girlfriend, so Kendra and Bridget really take the more realistic title of GirlfriendTM, a largely ceremonial position that would normally be subject to rotation anytime at Hef’s whim. Their success with this show has allowed all three to continue their reign at the mansion much longer than anyone anticipated, leading to close relationships between the three as well as Hef.
Hef is a strong presence on the show who is always felt even when he’s not seen. He sticks to the background for the most part, allowing his girls to take the lead on their show, but there’s no escaping his omnipresent aura in everything they do. At 81, the old geezer is still very spry and parties like a rockstar, but he’s also shown to be a highly loyal and sentimental man who genuinely cares for the well-being of his girls rather than just exploiting them. He’s still very involved in running his magazine and also takes a hands-on approach to fine-tuning the details of the many elaborate parties held at the mansion. There’s occasionally a twinge of creepiness watching the octogenarian cavorting with his young lasses, but when you consider that Hef is a true titan who used to hobnob with Marilyn Monroe you realize that these girls are probably fairly insignificant diversions in the grand scheme of things.
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